Detroit, 1967: Riot or Rebellion?

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by Bill Kubota on

Two weeks before the fiftieth anniversary of the July 23, 1967 police raid that set off a week of looting, fires, shootings and killings across the city, Detroit public radio host Stephen Henderson talked about what we should call that historic event.

Wayne State University professor of African American Studies Melba Boyd and former Detroit Police Chief and Assistant Mayor Ike McKinnon joined Henderson in the WDET-FM studio.

Riot or rebellion? Uprising? Revolution?

Bridge Magazine reporter Bill McGraw looked into that question for the Detroit Journalism Cooperative last year. Look at that storyhere.

As the decades pass, the questions can reframe the history Detroiters and the rest of the nation believe to be true.

The Detroit Historical Museum examines all this with their Detroit ’67: Perspectives Exhibition, even asking the question on a banner outside.